Walter Dean Myers
Street Love
To Constance
Contents
Harlem
The Hero
Damien and Sledge
Kevin and Damien
The Beauty
Melissa Ambers
Ruby Ambers
Junice Ambers looking from the Window of the Bus
Leslie Ambers in Bedford Hills Prison
Junice tells her Story at the Family Welfare Bureau
Damien on a Bench in the School Office
Junice on a Bench in the School Office
Damien and Kevin and Junice in the Supermarket
Junice in the Supermarket
Melissa’s Dream
The Mothers
The Fathers
Junice and Melissa
Rachel Davis, Department of Family Services
Junice in the Early Morning
Damien and Roxanne
The Phone Call
Damien, Junice, and Melissa in Grace’s Coffee Shop
Damien standing on the Platform, waiting for the Uptown 2
Junice Washing Dishes
Junice and Melissa
Damien
Junice at Bedford Hills to see her Mother
Junice and Melissa at Home
Kevin and Damien in Kevin’s House
Junice thinks of Calling Damien
Junice Calls Damien
Damien in his Room, his Math Homework on his Desk
Junice at the Family Court Offices
Junice
Damien by Himself on the Corner
Sledge and Damien and Harlem in front of Jackie Robinson Park
Junice and Damien
Damien and his Mother on Saturday Morning
Damien wakes at Night
Nine a.m. Damien calls Junice
Damien at Junice’s Door
Kevin and Damien on Malcolm X Boulevard
The Port Authority Bus Terminal
Damien and Junice
Junice with Damien and Melissa on the Bus to Memphis
About the Author
Other Books by Walter Dean Myers
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
HARLEM
Autumn in Harlem.
Fume-choked leaves, already
Yellowed, crack in the late September
Breeze. Weeds, city tough, city brittle,
Push defiantly along the concrete edges
Of Malcolm X Boulevard. On 137th Street
A toothless sidewalk vendor neatly stacks
His dark knit caps beside the plastic cell
Phone covers. Shadows indistinct in August heat
Now deepen and grow long across
The wide streets. Homeless men sniff the air and
Know that somewhere the Hawk stirs.
Harlem is not an easy place
To grow old, and so the young
Are everywhere,
Pouring from the buses, city dancing
To the rhythms of the street,
City dancing to the frantic spin of life
In the fast lane.
The HERO
Here we see a busy school yard
Black, brown, and tan forms
Painting the illusion of music
With their bodies, ball-dancing between the
White lines of the court.
Young Damien Battle, comfortable in stride and gesture
Wearing his seventeen years easily around broad
Shoulders, saunters at the unhurried pace of
Hero knowing that the space that
Opens before him is his due.
Beside him, perhaps a half step
Behind, his friend Kevin chatters easily.
They are young and proud and Black
For them life is a ripe orange
Succulent and sweet, ready to be devoured
And here are Sledge and Chico
Rivals from the other side of the Avenue
Their tribe is the more familiar
We have seen them on every corner
Of every city in America. They make us walk
Faster. They make us think of locked doors.
Of differences we would like to deny.
Do Sledge’s eyes meet Damien’s?
Does he sneer as he spins his basketball
On one brown finger as if it was the World?
Does he speak?
Does he speak?
We listen as Sledge’s mocking voice
Lifts itself above the background clatter
DAMIEN and SLEDGE
“Yo, Chico, check it out.
Yo, Chico,
There goes Damien, sliding and gliding
Past the court. Just strolling
And rolling his eyes
Away from the action
So we can’t get the satisfaction
Of him peeping our dazzle.”
“Peeping your dazzle?” Damien replies,
White toothing all over Sledge.
“I thought I was scoping the
Frazzled chumdom of a downtown clown.”
“My game is my name,” Sledge replies.
“Call it if you want some.”
Damien shakes his head
“Yo, Sledge, if talk was walk my man you would be
Halfway round the world. You’re confusing game with
Lame and Ball with stall. But at the end of the
Day your rap is weaker than your play.”
Sledge comes chest to chest with Damien.
His eyes are slits that carve into the flesh.
“Yo, Damien, Listen up, man
Your mouth is shouting and your lips are pouting
Like you’re somebody’s girlfriend
Running off to double latteville
’Cause you know you ain’t got the heart
To start no get down with me.”
Damien scoped the scene and weighed it
Sledge’s crew was throwing signs
And gritting teeth
They wore their colors but Damien didn’t
Know what was beneath those jackets
“Yo, Sledge, we’ll get it straight one day,”
Damien said. “Just the two of us.
Not now, not here, but we’ll know when
We got to do what it looks like we got to do.”
A brief conversation, hard looks in the air
Damien walks away and Sledge stares.
No big thing.
No big thing.
Just two seventeen-year-olds
Checking out a manhood jam.
Damien and Kevin make their way out
Breathing easier as they start up to Sugar Hill
The late summer shadows accentuate the edges
Of the hood, define it in shape and size
Yes, and darkness
The shadows on the corner shift as they walk by
Sharp eyes weigh their pockets from the distance
Heavy sisters weighing down the white brick
Stoops watch the passing scene
As they have for a hundred years
KEVIN and DAMIEN
“Yo, Damien, how you read Sledge?
Is he just about being a fool
Or do you think that his brain
Is twisted enough to find something
Cool in that lip and drip world he’s sliming In?”
“Sniff the hood, my man,” Damien said. “The bad with the
Good. Some guys are banking on their reach
Going for the stars, scoping on the great,
Some see they can’t reach and all they got is hate
To lift them from misery of the day and there’s
Nothing you can say if their eyes don’t see
The prize the way you do. That’s the hood, bro,
That’s the way it flows and it don’t make
No never mind if you find yourself
Off the glory ride and slipping with the tide
Like Sledge. Hate is what the man
Got and if it’s not boss he’s got to toss it
Anyway. This is a concrete Apple.”
“Damien, so are you saying
You’re ready to fly?
Cop some getaway like all the other sleek
Birds winging through distant trees with just
An occasional peek
Now and then and a slanted rap about
Old school memories?”
“Who knows, man?” Damien said, checking out a tall
Brother working on his gangster lean.
“You’re talking about
What tomorrow will bring, and what tune the hood will
Sing. You’re talking and I’m listening, but
There’s no clear message glistening on my Horizon.”
“Yo, you’re sliding deep but my brain is still
Creeping on the surface,” Kevin said. “Break it on
Down or push it on. It don’t make no never mind.”
“My moms was asking me to do the same layout
But that’s all played out when you don’t
Know which way the wind is blowing
Or which way you’re supposed to be going
My folks are laying lines on me like
They’ve written out the part and all
I got to do is get to a place called Start
And follow the road to fame and glory—
A PhD in mucho buckology
Two point five kids and a quick apology
To the starving folks in East Ain’tGotNothingVille
While I look down from Sugar Hill and tell
Myself how phat my program is.”
“Sounds righteous, my brother,
Best listen to your mother
Now what I need is for you to feed
Me the name of the female lead
Is the right chick a light chick?
Some straight-haired honey
With a little money and a skinny little nose
Pointing away from her toes?
Or could it really be a girl with some kink to her curl?
A midnight mama with some snap and some sway
Like that treetop sister ’cross the way
Walking like the Queen of the Avenue
Could she interest a lord like you?”
Damien looked, he had seen her before
He knew her name, but not much more
“Yeah, I see her,” he said. “She’s the quiet kind
I don’t know her game, or what’s in her mind.”
“And if you found her in your net,” Kevin asked,
“What then? Would you throw her back?
Or could she be a midday snack?”
“Yo, Kevin, you know I have a plan
And you know I have Roxanne. I’m not into
Fast foods or the easy line
Although I have to admit the lady’s
Fine as she needs to be but can
She satisfy the brain or the heart
I don’t know.”
“Damien, Main Man, that girl might not satisfy
Your brain or your heart,” Kevin said. “But, Lord knows,
There are parts of me that find her
Delightful. We should catch
Her and offer her our sweet company.”
“No,” Damien said. “She might be light, I haven’t
Spoken more than a word or two with her. But
She walks darkly, as if her mind weighs down
Her steps.
When we’ve spoken it was just puffs of air
Syllables that weren’t there
When we said them and left nothing
On the memory.
I don’t know what she thinks
Of if she thinks of anything so profound
That it would interest me, and I’m not a snob
But she’s a depth I have not sounded.
I wonder what a movie of her life would be
What images come to fill the screens
Of her mind?”
The BEAUTY
My head is filled with images as I stumble,
Heavy-footed through this endless day.
Terrible images of my mother’s face
Twisted in disbelief, her body trembling
As the realization that her life was finished
Washed over her.
Her mouth was open but all that I could
Hear was the wailing of her soul
As they hustled her from the chaos of the courtroom
Into the chaos of the foreverness
That was to be her punishment.
Guilty of possession and distribution
Twenty-five years to life
How could they know she had never possessed
Anything worth the while
Had never distributed anything except pieces of herself
Which she gave freely
To those in need, or to those who, like
Her, were broken, and needed a fix?
She possessed nothing as they led
Her, handcuffed, away
What she left behind
Forlorn and weeping in the second row of benches
Were not her children,
Lost and desperate in the whirlwind
My head is filled with images
Of Melissa and me on the court steps
She crying and clinging to my skirt
Me crying and clinging to a distant God
As we made our way to the bus terminal
For the long journey home.
My head is filled with images
That mare at night and tear at my flesh
There is no rational corner in my head
Beyond making tea for Melissa
Beyond making conversation with Miss Ruby
Nothing to make my legs move in the
Direction of our apartment as if there
Were sense to moving
If anyone could look into my head
See or feel the dread that has captured
Me or see within this sad, unhappy brain
They would only turn away
Turn away.
MELISSA AMBERS
Mommy seemed a hundred miles away
In the yellow-light
Courtroom
With all of the people standing at the tables
And Mommy was smaller
Than they were
Even though everybody says
She is so tall
The judge pushed his glasses
Up on his nose when he was talking
But Mommy just looked
Down
When the judge said how
Long Mommy would be in jail
A terrible sound came out of
Junice
A hurt sound
A Uhhh! sound
Her body jerked forward
I was so scared
So scared
People were shuffling papers
They swished as people
Stood and their feet
Cluffed across the floor
Mommy turned
Her eyes were dark and
Wild as if she were
Seeing a monster coming
I turned to see what Mommy saw
But all I saw was the people leaving
Through the big doors in the back
When I turned back to Mommy
There was just a little piece of her left
Between the big policemen
My skin was crawling
And my arms were shaking
Miss Ruby called out in the courtroom
She said “Be strong, da
ughter!”
Junice said I was crying.
I don’t remember crying but afterward
Afterward
My throat was sore
RUBY AMBERS
Yeah, it’s hard, baby
It’s hard right down to the bone
I said Oh, it’s hard baby
It’s hard right down to the very bone
It’s hard when you’re a woman
And you find yourself all alone
I’ve been flapping and scrapping
And running from door to door
You know I’ve been flapping and scrapping, honey
Running from door to door
I ain’t what I used to be, ain’t really Miss Ruby anymore
Oh, daughter, daughter, daughter,
Why you chasing White Girl dreams?
Yes, oh, daughter, daughter,
Why you chasing White Girl dreams?
Them rainbows you were finding,
Ain’t really what they seems to be.
I told Junice to get herself on up
We ain’t no trifling women
I been knocked down and flung around
“Junice, why you looking so sad, baby?
You got your Miss Ruby here, ain’t you?
You and Lissa gonna be all right.
Miss Ruby’s been scruffed and roughed
In her day but she don’t lay down.
No sir. You mama will be home ’fore
You know it.”
“She got twenty-five years, Miss Ruby.”
“We Ambers women. We been down and we
Been up. We don’t tip and run. No, we sure